literature – AbeBooks' Reading Copyhttps://www.abebooks.com/blog
AbeBooks book blogThu, 17 May 2018 16:21:23 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.6Amazon’s Best Books of the Month: March 2017https://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2017/03/06/amazons-best-books-of-the-month-march-2017/
https://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2017/03/06/amazons-best-books-of-the-month-march-2017/#commentsMon, 06 Mar 2017 20:29:20 +0000https://www.abebooks.com/blog/?p=25303If you’re looking for your next favorite page-turner, look no further than this fantastic list of books, recommended by the Amazon Book editors as the best book bets for the month. Warning: your TBR (To Be Read) pile may teeter dangerously high after reading the synopses to follow. This is a particularly intriguing month.

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Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
From the internationally bestselling author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, one of the most anticipated books of 2017: an astonishingly timely love story that brilliantly imagines the forces that transform ordinary people into refugees — and the impossible choices that follow — as they’re driven from their homes to the uncertain embrace of new lands.

One of the Boys: A Novel by Daniel Magariel
Set in the sublimely stark landscape of suburban New Mexico and a cramped apartment shut tight to the world, One of the Boys conveys with stunning prose and chilling clarity a young boy’s struggle to hold onto the dangerous pieces of his shattered family. Harrowing and beautiful, Daniel Magariel’s masterful debut is a story of survival: two foxhole-weary brothers banding together to protect each other from the father they once trusted, but no longer recognize.

White Tears: A Novel by Hari Kunzru
Seth and Carter have one thing in common: an obsession with music. When Seth accidentally records an unknown singer in a park, Carter sends it out over the Internet, claiming it’s a long lost 1920s blues recording by a musician called Charlie Shaw. When an old collector contacts them to say that their fake record and their fake bluesman are actually real, the two young white men, accompanied by Carter’s troubled sister Leonie, spiral down into the heart of the nation’s darkness, encountering a suppressed history of greed, envy, revenge, and exploitation.

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge
Marina Willett, M.D., has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer’s life: In the summer of 1934, the “old gent” lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow’s family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends–or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he’s solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears. The police say it’s suicide. Marina is a psychiatrist, and she doesn’t believe them.

Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter
In this revolutionary book, Adam Alter, a professor of psychology and marketing at NYU, tracks the rise of behavioral addiction, and explains why so many of today’s products are irresistible. By reverse engineering behavioral addiction, Alter explains how we can harness addictive products for the good—to improve how we communicate with each other, spend and save our money, and set boundaries between work and play—and how we can mitigate their most damaging effects on our well-being, and the health and happiness of our children.

Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, and School, or, How to Become an Expert in Just About Anything by Ulrich Boser
In this entertaining and engrossing book, Boser argues that learning is a skill, showing how techniques like self-questioning and thinking about thinking can create much deeper levels of understanding. Among the important findings and practical tips, Boser tells fascinating stories, like how Jackson Pollock came to his revolutionary drip painting method–and why an ancient counting device helps people gain superhuman math skills. But perhaps most importantly, you will be able to fully capitalize on your mind’s remarkable ability to develop new skills.

All Grown Upby Jami Attenberg
Who is Andrea Bern? When her therapist asks the question, Andrea knows the right things to say: she’s a designer, a friend, a daughter, a sister. But it’s what she leaves unsaid—she’s alone, a drinker, a former artist, a shrieker in bed, captain of the sinking ship that is her flesh—that feels the most true. Told in gut-wrenchingly honest, mordantly comic vignettes, All Grown Up is a breathtaking display of Jami Attenberg’s power as a storyteller, a whip-smart examination of one woman’s life, lived entirely on her own terms.

Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper
Many of us take dictionaries for granted, and few may realize that the process of writing dictionaries is, in fact, as lively and dynamic as language itself. With sharp wit and irreverence, Kory Stamper cracks open the complex, obsessive world of lexicography, from the agonizing decisions about what to define and how to do it, to the knotty questions of usage in an ever-changing language. She explains why small words are the most difficult to define, how it can take nine months to define a single word, and how our biases about language and pronunciation can have tremendous social influence.

The Wanderers by Meg Howrey
In four years, aerospace giant Prime Space will put the first humans on Mars. Helen Kane, Yoshihiro Tanaka, and Sergei Kuznetsov must prove they’re the crew for the historic voyage by spending seventeen months in the most realistic simulation ever created. Constantly observed by Prime Space’s team of “Obbers,” Helen, Yoshi, and Sergei must appear ever in control. But as their surreal pantomime progresses, each soon realizes that the complications of inner space are no less fraught than those of outer space. The borders between what is real and unreal begin to blur, and each astronaut is forced to confront demons past and present, even as they struggle to navigate their increasingly claustrophobic quarters—and each other.

The Rules Do Not Apply: A Memoir by Ariel Levy
When thirty-eight-year-old New Yorker writer Ariel Levy left for a reporting trip to Mongolia in 2012, she was pregnant, married, financially secure, and successful on her own terms. A month later, none of that was true. In this profound and beautiful memoir, Levy chronicles the adventure and heartbreak of being “a woman who is free to do whatever she chooses.” Her own story of resilience becomes an unforgettable portrait of the shifting forces in our culture, of what has changed—and of what is eternal.

We know, we know – the less said about the year 2016 the better. While we too held our collective breath and cringed painfully through much of the year, it is worth noting that whether for better or (much, much) worse, the most remarkable years in history stay with us and go on to be remembered and talked about for the (brighter) years to come.

And part of that legacy must of course be commemorated with the books the year gave us. This year’s cream of the crop included Bob Dylan, James Brown and Bruce Springsteen, stories of the people of Vietnam, Cameroon and China, new titles from heavy hitters like Zadie Smith, Michael Chabon and Ann Patchett, and explorations of physics, genetics, poverty and more. Happily, the year that made us most want to bury our heads in a book also gave us a wonderful, brilliant selection to choose from. Please enjoy our literary review of 2016.

“It’s the most wonderful tiiiiiiiiime of the yeeeeear….” That’s right, fellow book nerds. It’s the end of the year, which always finds me looking back fondly at all the new characters I met, stories I read, history I learned, and authors I discovered, all thanks to books. Books!

You may have noticed (though I’d be surprised!) that I did not do a post for 2015, and that’s because I was off having my second child (much of my reading around that time consisted of results found by googling “baby ate goose poop“, “toddler hates new baby – normal?” and the like). Fortunately, as we all adjusted to our new family little by little, I found myself able to pick books back up again, and have actually enjoyed some fantastic reads over the past year. Not as many as I’d hoped, but it’s a start.

I also found that my new, busier life with littles underfoot has changed my reading habits. Most notably, while I used to be willing to give a book a generous benefit of the doubt and a long, long time to get good, I am now fairly ruthless. Time is money people, chop chop, hook me quickly or you’re gone. So you can be assured that these books, my best reads of 2016, are good.

Per my usual, these are not all new books, not all one genre, not all one anything. It is my list of the best books I read in 2016, of the books I felt like reading at the time, in no particular order. How’s that for arbitrary?

Enjoy.

1. Purple Hibiscusby Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This is a name that will appear in any recommended reading lists from me – Adichie has quickly become one of my favorite authors since I read Americanah, and also discovered her Tedx talk “We Should All be Feminists”. She writes (and speaks) with a clarity and warmth that is so inviting, even in handling the most painful or complicated subject matter. Purple Hibiscus, her first novel, tells the story of a young Nigerian girl named Kambili trying to reconcile her adoration and admiration of her father, a powerful, rigid and devoted man, with her love of and attraction to the freedom she witnesses at the house of her cousins. Themes of gender, sexuality, religion and family are all at play within the book and within Kambili herself as she struggles to discover what is really her – how she really feels, what she really believes – and what is simply indoctrination, absorption, and blind acceptance. It’s a solid, fast-paced story with plenty of room for introspection.

2. Belzharby Meg Wolitzer
I read this book in two sittings. Highly engrossing, fast-paced story of 5 teenagers brought together in an unlikely way and an unlikely place due to past trauma, and the mysterious events that follow. I found it so magical that I don’t want to give away much about the plot, but it is set in a boarding school specializing in helping traumatized and emotionally fragile teenagers. Parts of the story filled me with such a sense of longing for the impossible, to be able to conjure what is gone, that I paused several times while reading to just sit with it. This is the second Meg Wolitzer book I’ve read, and I’ll look for more now. She has a way of creating marvelously endearing characters.

3. Rad American Women A-Zby Kate Schatz
BUY THIS BOOK! Buy it for yourself, and for every child and most of your adults in your life. I love it so much. The seriously excellent illustrations by Miriam Klein Stahl would be reason enough to want to own it, but there are also some great learnings in here. It is, as the title says, an A-Z of 26 fantastic and remarkable American women and a bit about them, as a means to illustrate the alphabet. Using clear, simple language for kids to understand, the book makes its way from iconic feminist and political activist Angela Davis all the way to unforgettable author Zora Neale Hurston, with stops along the way for all manner of brave, brilliant and inventive women, some of whom I had never even heard of previously. It’s an important and gorgeous book. And it was publicly recommended by Kathleen Hanna, which should turn your little inner punk-rock heart to happy goo. Is three too little? Because I really think my son needs this for Christmas. If not this year, then next for sure. I hope they make a Canadian one.

4. Their Eyes Were Watching Godby Zora Neale Hurston
And speaking of Zora Neale Hurston, I finally got it together and read Their Eyes Were Watching God. I loved this book. Took a while to get into the rhythm of the dialogue/dialect but then it was such an excellent read. It begins with the painful return of Janie Crawford, a woman whose third marriage has recently ended, to her Florida home, amid gossip and speculation from her nosy neighbors. The novel’s story unfolds through Janie telling her friend the events that led to the dissolution of her marriage and her previous reality, and her eventual return home. The descriptions really made me want to see Lake Okeechobee — in clear weather.

5. Bearby Marian Engel
To get it out of the way – yes, it’s the one that has the sex scenes between a woman and a bear. In fact, I received it last Christmas, mostly as a joke, because of that bit. And I found that beyond the um…ursine passions…it’s actually quite a lovely and enjoyable book. Lou is a quiet and unassuming librarian who accepts a posting on a remote Canadian island to comb through the estate of a former inhabitant, a colonel whose collection reveals much. To quote my husband, “the language was better than the story”. And that’s definitely true. I loved the beauty of the words in this book. It was gorgeous to read and very evocative. Also, very Canadian in its lush wilderness descriptions. You can practically smell the rotting, mushroomy stumps and rain-drenched ferns. I didn’t feel overly attached to Lou or her outcome, but the whole thing had a sort of dreamy, magical realism meets PNW-pastoral thing that was nice. And yes, a first – don’t think I’d ever read a sex scene involving a bear before!

6. Small Warsby Sadie Jones
This was not as easy to immerse myself in as other Sadie Jones books I have read, but I felt compelled to keep at it, and am glad I did. It was as expertly shaped and beautifully written as her other books, and there’s no doubt she is a skilled storyteller. There was more focus on the engagements of war and politics of the military, and less about character development for part of it which didn’t hold my personal interest as well, but by the end I found myself deeply attached to the story and its players. Took me until about halfway through to really be engaged, but then I didn’t want to put it down. In the end, I would recommend it.

7. The Children of Menby P.D. James
This was actually the first book I read in 2016. Beautifully written and spare, with a carefully crafted tone that walks the line between cynicism and hope, drive and defeat. Such a brilliant concept for a story – if you don’t know, all women across the globe have stopped conceiving babies – and a different departure for a dystopian novel. I found it more difficult to connect emotionally to the story in the book than I did with the movie version, I think because Theodore is so largely unlikable and loathsome on paper. They really toned that down for ol’ Clive Owen. Also, the gruesome, despair-fueled madness of the women with their little dogs and little dolls was just horrifying in print. Very effective, and hard to read. All in all The Children of Men is definitely a really good book, but I think for me this might be one of the very few cases where I thought the film worked better than the book. Maybe I just don’t like to cringe.

8. Me Before Youby JoJo Moyes
This is an unusual choice for me, a bit more so-called “chick lit” than my usual fare. I really, really enjoyed this book, though. Funny timing – I took this book with me to have in the hospital, for the birth of our baby, who we named Louisa. I began reading this the very next day, to find a protagonist named Louisa. The Louisa of the story is Louisa Clark, a young woman, quite desperate for money, who accepts a position attending to the needs of Will Traynor, a profoundly physically disabled man, confined to a wheelchair since an extreme sport accident. There are plenty of cliché tropes here – Will is moody, unfriendly and gruff to Louisa’s wide-eyed, well-meaning optimism. Maybe it was just a glorified, better-written romance novel, but it was unpredictable and refreshing and very moving.

9. Dark Placesby Gillian Flynn
Talk about fast reads! This one by the author of Gone Girl was just as much a page-turner as her more famous title. Our protagonist is Libby Day, a woman whose immediate family were murdered when she was just seven years old. The only other surviving family member was her older brother Ben, who has been in prison ever since, largely due to Libby’s testimony. The novel is aptly named, and made me feel unsettled several times throughout the story with how dark and ugly it was. In some ways it reminded me of a trashier, invented version of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, but with some weird teenage Satanism thrown in. It was very entertaining and decently written, but pretty forgettable and probably not something I would highly recommend unless you are on an airplane or in a hospital waiting room. But if I’m honest, I had to include it just for how much I got into it and how quickly I read it.

10. North of Normalby Cea Sunrise Person
This is the true story of a little girl growing up in a counter-culture family who left California in the 1960s to live off grid and make a go of it in the Canadian wilderness. Unfortunately, the bulk of the story doesn’t resemble Little House in the Big Woods so much as Go Ask Alice. Reading this book, which was a fascinating and fast read, mostly made me feel self righteous and angry at the author’s parents, as well as morally superior. But when I managed to step out of that for a moment, it also made me stop and think about how many different kinds of families there are, and how many different kinds of childhoods, and how the same people could be capable of providing such a fantastic and wonderful childhood in some regards and such a terrible and broken childhood at the same time. Definitely worth reading.

11. Necessary Liesby Diane Chamberlain
A fictionalized account of the real Eugenics Sterilization Program which in North Carolina alone resulted in the sterilization of over 7000 of its people, most or many of whom were unaware they were being sterilized, from 1929 to 1975. Social work programs had a tremendous amount of power in rural and poor and black communities. As a result, anyone deemed to be threats to themselves, or with a low enough IQ (and for even less acceptable reasons) could be sterilized without their consent. The novel focuses on two sisters growing up in rural farm land, and a social worker who becomes involved in their lives, and the story alternates between the two perspectives chapter to chapter. Very sad but an excellent read.

12. The Road Backby Erich Maria RemarqueI’ve never been much for fiction about war. I think in part, selfishly, because I use reading as an escape from the unimaginable horrors of some aspects of the world, war included. And there have been so many books and movies about the atrocity of being immersed in a war zone, particularly about being on the front lines. Full disclosure: I have never read All Quiet on the Western Front. Some of our English classes in high school had that on the curriculum, my classes did not happen to choose that book. I have heard it is excellent, and having now read this book, its sequel, I will definitely find it and read it.

The Road Back begins in war and very quickly moves into peace, which sounds comforting and safe, but quickly proves bewildering, angering and surreal instead. Ernst and his friends have been freed from the front, luckier than the dead and the horribly disfigured, but still badly, badly scarred as evidenced by their struggles trying to reintegrate into society. Remarque did such a perfect job subtly Illustrating the absolute ludicrous hypocrisy in our society when it comes to killing. These young men, lauded as heroes and commanded to kill, then celebrated for it for years on end, find themselves chastised for foul language or too much drinking when attempting to become part of the world once more. Gainful employment, romance and partnership, education, family, the transition from childhood to adulthood, and trying to find one’s place in the world are all themes explored. And from the perspective of those who really came of age surrounded by death and fear, forced to grow up prematurely and immediately, and are now expected to seamlessly toe the line and revert to being pleasant and compliant young men, it makes for an obvious and painful juxtaposition. The book was blunt-force horrifying in some passages, but also quite expert and delicate in the writing. One of the better, more thoughtful and thought-provoking books I have read in a long time.

13. Daydreams of Angelsby Heather O’Neill
This is three for three for me from Heather O’Neill. Much like O’Neill’s debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, and her subsequent The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, this short story collection from the Montreal author is a beautiful way to spend some time. All of her storyscapes are inhabited by such dynamic and appealing characters, as well as a nearly-constant sense of whimsy and wonder. In the hands of another writer, I think that could almost me exhausting or cloying, the way even the best dessert tastes too sweet after a while. O’Neill’s writing, however, balances the dark and shabby with the miraculous and optimistic just perfectly. Darker still, and sadder, is the tightrope-walk she manages between innocence and experience. As a reader I do find myself occasionally uncomfortable while immersed in O’Neill’s words, because there is a sense that the monster in the closet is not only very much real, but also just barely out of sightline, and if you turn your head at just the right (wrong) moment, you’re going to catch a glimpse. Her short stories are no exception.

14. Grasshopper Jungleby Andrew Smith
Oh, I enjoyed this one so much. It’s definitely one of the most fun books I’ve read in a long time. It’s a bildungsroman coming of age story meets weird comedy meets small town boredom, meets science fiction. Basically, the world is taken over by enormous ravenous insects, and it is up to one teenage boy, who happens to be in love with his two best friends, to fight back. It reminded me of The Goonies.

15. A Town Like Aliceby Nevil Shute
Could this be my favorite read of the year? It is the story of a remarkable and enterprising woman through two very distinct phases of her life. In that regard I feel like it would have been more successful for me in two volumes, similar to the way Roald Dahl’s adult autobiography was split into his childhood and adulthood (Boy, and Going Solo). The first part of the book is dedicated to the protagonist’s time in Japanese occupied Malaya in the Second World War, being shuffled from Japanese guard to Japanese guard, with no prison camp even to call home, and no one in charge to take responsibility for her and the party of women and children with which she travels. As part of her harrowing experience during this time, she meets an Australian man who does something gallant and nearly heroic to better her lot, and she develops feelings for him immediately, but soon believes him dead. After the war, she learns he is alive and the second part of the book tells the story of her learning to live on a cattle station with him in the Australian outback. Parts of the book were tough to adjust to, and I think it took me a full two thirds of the story to stop flinching at the constant casually racist language and letting it jar me out of the story. Even though that was no doubt very much the vernacular of the times, I wish it could have been toned down just a little. Regardless, it was a very interesting if fictional snapshot of two times and places from which I am entirely removed, and Nevil Shute is an excellent storyteller. I would recommend it.

16. Secret Daughterby Shilpa Somaya Gowda
I read this when I was in a bit of a book rut/slump. Secret Daughter was an engaging story, with believable characters and detailed setting. The writing was sound, and most importantly for kickstarting a reading binge, it was a fast-paced and very easy read. The story did feel a bit like a made-for-tv movie or Hallmark card, where you can tell the sentiment behind it is real, but it is still a lot like every other one that came before, and you know pretty much exactly where it is going. I really like stories about culture clash and identity and belonging, so this appealed to me a lot in that sense. It is an ensemble cast book with the story revolving around Asha, a California girl who was adopted from an Indian orphanage at 1 year old, and how her birth and adoption affect her and those she has been closest to. It was not a literary masterpiece perhaps, but it was a satisfying read.

17. Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
This is an unusual book. Made up of snapshots, moments, observations, smaller than vignettes, all carefully painting the outline of a relationship, a marriage, early parenthood. And if you squint you can see that it very clearly paints the whole picture, and all you need to know. While saying more than many books manage to, and using many fewer words, Dept. of Speculation is absolutely gutting. For those who feel a sense of somewhere else, who suffer from occasional fits of restlessness, of ennui and dissatisfaction, of the unbearable weariness of repetition, reading this book is almost physically painful at times. Its pages are full of longing, and aching and seething, and I feel like it is going to haunt me. It is a fantastically effective book. Highly recommended.

18. Everyone Brave is Forgivenby Chris Cleave
I’ve read three of Chris Cleave’s four novels now. I really admire his writing. He manages to find a skillful balance between an engaging, fast-paced read and meaningful, complex, narrative and character relationships. Everyone Brave is Forgiven (a title I love) splits its time between London and Malta, and between main characters Mary, a young, idealistic woman from privilege, her best friend Hilda, her student Zachary, her fiancé Tom, and his best friend Alistair. The novel propels each of them through the horrors of war, from varying degrees of innocence and carefree frivolity to a place of uncertainty, exhaustion and somberness, but ultimately, hope. It navigated bleak and bitter subject matter enough to do it credit but not so much as to become mired in melancholy or ugliness.

19. Her: A Memoirby Christa Parravani
This is a very thoughtfully-written memoir by the surviving identical twin of a woman who spiraled into terrible depression and anxiety after being the victim of a violent sexual assault, and eventually died. There is a lot of joy and redemption in the book, but much of it is so saturated in grief that it feels flattening. It doesn’t take away from its value as a book, but it does definitely read in parts as a therapeutic attempt at catharsis. The most exciting and intriguing part for me was a really fascinating passage that consists only of the dialogue between the surviving twin/author and a reported psychic, which left my mind whirling, and instilled a bizarre sense of hope. It really Is a tremendously painful read, all told. Recommended, I guess? It’s a good book. But ow. I wanted to hug the author when I finished.

20. On Immunity: An Inoculationby Eula Biss
Having small children in 2016 is interesting. Attitudes toward and conflict around vaccinations have morphed over the last decade or so as proponents of organic, “all natural” products have become fearful and skeptical of the safety and efficacy of modern vaccines, from the flu shot and beyond. With convenience and modern technology moving at a rapid clip, and climate change an ever larger-looming specter, there are those who have taken rejection of industrial interference to such an extreme that vaccination rates have fallen too low in parts of North America for herd immunity to be effective. Vocal parties in both the pro-vax and anti-vax camp attack each other, ostensibly for endangering children. In her thoughtful, accessible book, Biss explores this new fear – not only of the government and the establishment, but of the very environment around us, and how that fear lives to varying degrees in all of us. She also deftly and humorously acknowledges how as a person responsible for safekeeping the most vulnerable and beautiful child that the world has ever seen, every new parent finds that fear magnified beyond belief, particularly in the middle of the night, and how for better or worse, we are all connected to one another. I put this book down several times during my reading to make note of passages or phrases. One of my favorite bits was: “Though toxicologists tend to disagree with this, many people regard natural chemicals as inherently less harmful than man-made chemicals. We seem to believe, against all evidence, that nature is entirely benevolent”.

If you can’t get enough of other people’s book recommendations, here are some lists of the best books that came out in 2016, from the fine folks at Publishers Weekly, and The Washington Post, and the BBC. There is also the NPR Book Concierge, and then over at Digg, they claim to have “rounded up all the Top 10 lists we could find, smashed ’em together, and spit out overall Top 10 lists“, which sounds violent, intriguing and useful. Check out Digg’s resulting top 10 books of 2016 list.

]]>https://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2016/03/07/februarys-bestselling-signed-books/feed/0What We Read in 2015https://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2015/12/29/what-we-read-in-2015/
https://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2015/12/29/what-we-read-in-2015/#commentsTue, 29 Dec 2015 21:11:27 +0000http://www.abebooks.com/blog/?p=23440At AbeBooks we have software engineers, accountants, marketers, customer support reps, account managers and we all share one thing in common: a passion for books. We asked people around the office to share some of the books they read this year – it’s a fascinating list and perhaps you’ll be inspired to read some of these recommended titles.

Share your favorite books of the year in the comments section below.

Emily B

1. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak This was a wonderfully emotional and thoughtfully written book about a young German girl during the 2nd World War. Highly recommended to anyone who doesn’t mind letting a tear or two warp the pages of their novels.

2.The Kingkiller Chronicle (books one and two) by Patrick Rothfuss (waiting on the third one!) Would strongly encourage anyone who’s missing the Harry Potter school days and anxiously waiting for the next Game of Thrones book to give these a read. Lyrically written with action, romance, and music aplenty.

3.Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins Funny, odd, and charming, this book has helped stave off winter doldrums with enchanting characters and quirky humor. It has also inexplicably increased my beet consumption by 100%.

Thomas N

1. Look Who’s Back by Timur Vermes Adolf Hitler wakes up on a patch of open ground, alive and well. Things have changed – no Eva Braun, no Nazi party, no war. Hitler barely recognizes his beloved Fatherland, filled with immigrants and run by a woman. People certainly recognize him, albeit as a flawless impersonator who refuses to break character. The unthinkable, the inevitable happens, and the ranting Hitler goes viral, becomes a YouTube star, gets his own T.V. show, and people begin to listen. A strangely entertaining look at today’s media landscape, using one of the biggest taboo subject in Germany.

2. Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick Having been to Korea this year I enjoyed this fascinating look into North Korea’s daily lives. A sometimes “scary” trip into my personal past behind the iron curtain.

3. Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho Simply one of the most beautiful written books I ever read. Well, kind of read for the third time…

Dawn P

1. Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter I really enjoyed this book, it was a little dark and graphic at times and if you have a teenager daughter it may be a book to avoid reading. Great story!

2. The Stolen Ones by Owen Laukkanen Human trafficking is not something I ever thought about. This book is a great story and truly puts it into perspective. A little dark but a great read!

3. Bones are Forever by Kathy Reichs I’ve read a lot of Kathy Reichs and usually enjoy them, I guess reading so many make them a little predicable. I knew the ending a long way from the end. I’m probably going to avoid future Kathy Reichs unless her style changes.

Yuriy Z

1. Wait Until Spring, Bandini by John Fante I was hooked: will the family stand as catholic mother shuts down seemingly unfaithful and constantly unemployed father? What kind of man will a young Arturo become as he wrestles with his Italian heritage and his attraction to carnal affairs?

3. Ask the Dust by John Fante I was mesmerized: Arturo meets Camilla Lopez and the drama develops so fast and so strong, yet so gentle and profound by balancing explosive personalities and vulnerable hearts. This is now one of my all time favorite books.

4. Dreams from Bunker Hill by John Fante I was sad: it’s simply impossible to measure up to “Ask the Dust”. Bandini is now an up-and-coming Hollywood writer, and he’s more miserable than ever. Arturo is trying to find his place between hollow and pretentious studios, and gritty and rich Bunker Hill.

Shi H

1. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez One does not simply write an epic story across seven generations, he shall also name all the characters after their fathers. All those love, hate, pain and struggling that are so vivid at the time, all eventually faded in history and became a part of the eternal time.

2. The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham “The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard”. A book that makes you rethink about your life.

3. Takemitsu ZamuraiAn epic seinen manga series I would totally recommend. It was drawn with ink brushes and very oriental artistic.

Cliff M

1. Future Crimes by Marc Goodman If you want to be scared into taking better care of your data online, this is the book. At times it felt a bit sensationalistic, but after double-checking his stories, it all just plain scary.

2. I Must Say by Martin Short This is a fantastic auto-biography of a fascinating person. But I have one caveat: don’t read this. You absolutely MUST listen to the audiobook – which is performed by Martin himself.

3. Dear Leader by Jang Jin-Sung An amazing, true-life story of one person’s escape from North Korea. If this doesn’t get turned into a movie, I’ll be seriously disappointed. Reading this sends you through sadness, fear, excitement, jubilation, and then back to the beginning all over again.

4. What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe The best science book of the year. Not only is it highly educational, but it’s absolutely, gut-splittingly, hilarious. Ever wondered if you could cook a steak from the re-entry heat of dropping it from space? Yeah, me neither – but the answer is here anyway.

6. Son of the Black Sword by Larry Correia A brand new fantasy novel from one of my favorite authors. Novels always live or die on the strength of their characters, and Larry creates some of the best.

Christi K

1. Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik This is a non-fiction book about journalist Adam Gopnik who moves to Paris with his wife and child. It follows the trials and tribulations of living abroad.

2. Ghost Boy by Martin Pistorius A non-fiction book about the author who fell ill in grade-school and became completely unresponsive and mostly paralyzed. What no one realized is that mentally he was still very aware, with no way to communicate, until finally someone gave him a chance.

3. The Wild Truth by Carine McCandless Written by the sister of Chris McCandless (of Into the Wild fame) this non-fiction book is about their childhood and gives insight into perhaps why he ultimately made the decisions he did that cost him his life.

4. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald A memoir about the author losing her father. Grieving her loss she closes off the rest of the world and dedicates herself to her passion of falconry and trains a notoriously sour bird, a Goshawk.

Udo G

1. The Fall and The First Man by Albert Camus I was pretty much disappointed by “The Fall” (maybe the translation was bad) but after that began reading Camus’ posthumously published “The First Man” which I enjoyed immensely.

2. Mr. Sammler’s Planet by Saul Bellow “Mr. Sammler’s Planet” was great too but I got stuck towards the end and still need to finish the last 10% some time.

3. Down and Out in London by George Orwell George Orwell’s first book, published in 1933, is a much thinner book and I finished it in a couple of weeks – highly recommended.

Ryan P

1. The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive #1)by Brandon SandersonSanderson introduces another refreshing magic system to us in the world of Roshar in an epic fantasy destined to be his magnum opus. Highly Recommended!

2.Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive #2)by Brandon Sanderson Sanderson made 1000+ pages fly by in the follow up to Words of Radiance. If you liked The Way of Kings you’ll love Words of Radiance. My best read of 2015!

3. The Final Empire (Mistborn #1-1) by Brandon Sanderson An innovative and complex magic system based around properties of certain metals keeps the pages turning. Recommended!

4. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge A classic Sci-Fi novel involving many intelligent races from different zones of the galaxy fighting for the fate of millions of lives. Highly recommended!

5. Shift Work by Tie Domi As a big fan of Tie Domi and hockey enforcers in general, it’s a nice insight into how players end up in those roles. Recommended for hockey fans!

Julie O

1. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah This is one of those books that stays with you long after you’ve read the last page. As a mother of two young girls, there were parts that were difficult to read as a parent, but it’s just so good (and sad and hopeful and heartbreaking and full of love) that I recommend this book to everyone!

2. Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill Considered a love story, this short novel takes a profound look at a marriage that was once full of love but starts to fall apart as the years go by. Written in a journal-like account, this story is both funny and sad.

3. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng An intimate look at a family grieving over the death of a family member. I read this book in one sitting – I couldn’t put it down.

4. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr This shouldn’t come as a surprise that this book has shown up on this list – pretty much everyone has read this Pulitzer prize winner (if you haven’t read it, you must!). This epic story takes place during World War II and focuses on a blind French girl and a German boy whose lives cross paths. What’s so incredible about this novel is how knowledgeable the author is about so many subjects. This book is definitely at the top of my “favorite books of all time” list.

Richard D

1. Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby This was my favorite book of year. It’s an amazing piece of non-fiction about how Newby escapes from a German POW camp in Italy and is then hidden in the mountains by various families and lonely souls in remote villages. It’s a story of kindness and also very, very funny, particularly when Newby is living on a farm with a family that was two very forward teenage daughters.

2. When Pride Still Mattered by David Maraniss This is a massive biography of legendary Green Bay Packers head coach Vince Lombardi – the man who was misquoted to have said: “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” It took me 10 months to pick up the book after getting it in Christmas 2014. I loved hearing about how he started out before even ending up with the Packers.

]]>https://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2015/09/28/abebooks-literary-link-lineup-4/feed/2Bookslut blog announces 2015 Daphne Awards shortlisthttps://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2015/09/17/bookslut-blog-announces-2015-daphne-awards-shortlist/
https://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2015/09/17/bookslut-blog-announces-2015-daphne-awards-shortlist/#commentsThu, 17 Sep 2015 11:49:55 +0000http://www.abebooks.com/blog/?p=22934The Daphne Awards are back. Organised by the Bookslut book blog, these awards celebrate literature from 50 years ago – in this case 1965. This year’s shortlist has just been announced by Jessa Crispin who has run Bookslut for as long as I can remember. AbeBooks.com is thrilled to be a partner once again.

The fascinating thing about these awards is the role that ‘time’ plays. Does a book that was decent in the middle of the 1960s still hold up today? Jessa had a team of judges plowing through hordes of books in order to produce this year’s shortlist. The winners will be announced in early December.

]]>https://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2015/09/17/bookslut-blog-announces-2015-daphne-awards-shortlist/feed/12015 Man Booker Shortlisthttps://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2015/09/15/2015-man-booker-shortlist/
https://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2015/09/15/2015-man-booker-shortlist/#respondTue, 15 Sep 2015 16:18:24 +0000http://www.abebooks.com/blog/?p=22873The judges have announced the 2015 shortlist for the Man Booker Prize and the list is full of interesting choices. The judges commented on the different writing styles, the literary backgrounds of the writers and the cultural heritage. The list includes both new and well known, established authors including Tom McCarthy and Anne Tyler. The winner will be announced on Tuesday 13 October 2015.

The 2015 shortlist is:

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
James brings to life the people who walked the streets of 1970s Kingston, who dominated the crack houses of 1980s New York, and who reemerged into a radically altered Jamaica of the 1990s. Brilliantly inventive, A Brief History of Seven Killings is an “exhilarating” ( The New York Times) epic that’s been called “a tour de force” ( The Wall Street Journal).

Satin Island by Tom McCarthy
From the author of Remainder and C(short-listed for the Man Booker Prize), and a winner of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, comes Satin Island, an unnerving novel that promises to give us the first and last word on the world – modern, postmodern, whatever world you think you are living in.

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma
Told from the point of view of nine year old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, The Fishermen is the Cain and Abel-esque story of an unforgettable childhood in 1990s Nigeria. When their father has to travel to a distant city for work, the brothers take advantage of his extended absence to skip school and go fishing. At the forbidden nearby river they encounter a madman, who predicts that one of the brothers will kill another. What happens next is an almost mythic event whose impact-both tragic and redemptive-will transcend the lives and imaginations of both its characters and its readers.

The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev SahotaThe Year of the Runaways tells of the bold dreams and daily struggles of an unlikely family thrown together by circumstance. Thirteen young men live in a house in Sheffield, each in flight from India and in desperate search of a new life. Tarlochan, a former rickshaw driver, will say nothing about his past in Bihar; and Avtar has a secret that binds him to protect the choatic Randeep. Randeep, in turn, has a visa-wife in a flat on the other side of town: a clever, devout woman whose cupboards are full of her husband’s clothes, in case the immigration men surprise her with a call.

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
‘It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon…’ This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she and Red fell in love that day in July 1959. The whole family on the porch, relaxed, half-listening as their mother tells the same tale they have heard so many times before. And yet this gathering is different. Abby and Red are getting older, and decisions must be made about how best to look after them and their beloved family home.

A Little Life by Hanya YanagiharaA Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is an immensely powerful and heartbreaking novel of brotherly love and the limits of human endurance. When four graduates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they re broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition.

Who do you predict will take the prize?

]]>https://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2015/09/15/2015-man-booker-shortlist/feed/0Amazon’s Top 10 Books: September 2015https://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2015/09/01/amazons-top-10-books-september-2015/
https://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2015/09/01/amazons-top-10-books-september-2015/#commentsTue, 01 Sep 2015 17:03:45 +0000http://www.abebooks.com/blog/?p=22769Here we go again – time to turn my TBR (“to be read”) pile into an exciting, teetering skyscraper of a stack, as the book editors at Amazon once again release their list of the top 10 recommended books for the month. I’m most excited about the Chrissie Hynde autobiography (is anybody cooler than Chrissie Hynde?) and the new Jonathan Franzen, personally, but September is shaping up to be a hell of a month for new books if this list is any indication, especially for people who like to laugh – new Jenny Lawson and new Mindy Kaling in the same month?! Fabulous.

Here are the 10 books recommended by Amazon book editors for September, plus, of course, the debut spotlighted book.

This month’s spotlighted book is You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine: A Novel by Alexandra Kleeman, called an intelligent and madly entertaining debut novel reminiscent of Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, among others. Here’s the scoop:

A woman known only by the letter A lives in an unnamed American city with her roommate, B, and boyfriend, C, who wants her to join him on a reality show called That’s My Partner! A eats (or doesn’t) the right things, watches endless amounts of television, often just for the commercials—particularly the recurring cartoon escapades of Kandy Kat, the mascot for an entirely chemical dessert—and models herself on a standard of beauty that only exists in such advertising. She fixates on the fifteen minutes of fame a news-celebrity named Michael has earned after buying up his local Wally Supermarket’s entire, and increasingly ample, supply of veal.

Meanwhile B is attempting to make herself a twin of A, who hungers for something to give meaning to her life, something aside from C’s pornography addiction, and becomes indoctrinated by a new religion spread throughout a web of corporate franchises, which moves her closer to the decoys that populate her television world, but no closer to her true nature.

]]>https://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2015/09/01/amazons-top-10-books-september-2015/feed/1Omar Sharif, Boris Pasternak, The KGB and the CIAhttps://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2015/07/30/omar-sharif-boris-pasternak-the-kgb-and-the-cia/
https://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2015/07/30/omar-sharif-boris-pasternak-the-kgb-and-the-cia/#commentsThu, 30 Jul 2015 16:14:09 +0000http://www.abebooks.com/blog/?p=22631
Midway through the year, while scanning a report of our recent high-value orders, a sale caught my eye. It was a copy of Boris Pasternak’s classic novel Doctor Zhivago, in its original Russian, bound in plain, blue cloth. It sold for $11,000. The bookseller’s description mentioned that this was the edition “covertly published by the CIA”. Obviously, I had to learn more about that. And I did. You can read all about the man who smuggled Doctor Zhivago into the light, here, from the KGB’s refusal to allow publication of the book in the Soviet Union, to the CIA’s very real involvement and eventual declassification of documents nearly 60 years later.

During my research, I also discovered the 1958 Pantheon edition of Zhivago (below), complete with many, many black and white illustrations by Alexander Alexeieff.

While I was initially disappointed to not have glossy, full-color illustrations, it ended up feeling so fitting. The more of Zhivago I read, and the more I learned about the climate in which in was written, the more the images seemed perfectly aligned with the book’s contents. And they’re quite beautiful. They’re all black and white. While I don’t know the original medium, I’d be tempted to guess charcoal. Some of the drawings seem crude and undefined in their style, but still manage to convey a strong message and elicit an emotional response. This is just a drop in the bucket- the book is just full of these dark, snowy, stark and telling images.